Never makes sense to steal something like that and keep it locally. Steal and ship overseas, sure. But keeping it in town/state/country? Even if you have a good diesel mechanic, EVENTUALLY you're going to need a major part or outside service and they will check the serial number.

Same thing happened to me. Kinda. I had five guitars stolen from me and the copswere less than enthusiastic about finding them. So I went to every pawn shop I couldthink of, showing them pictures of the guitars that I have on my phone. Sure enough, laterthat afternoon I got a phone call from one of the pawn shop owners. Turns out I knew thePOS that had robbed me.

Back in the late 80's I worked for a hydraulics company that built attachments for these. The buckets and thumbs and cylinders and such. Most of the used machines we worked on were "grey market" machines, purchased used (or often stolen) from across the border and brought into the country to have the work done. It was a standing joke that these machines often had no title and no traceable ownership. We'd repaint them and put on new cabs and cab risers and such, and these machines would then be shipped back across the border with new serial plates and foreign model numbers and resold overseas or just disappear into the forest to be beat on until they wore out and then abandoned. My boss made a lot of money on these machines.

Never, ever buy a used excavator, especially one with foreign model numbers. I would say there is about a 95% chance that the hours meters have been replaced at least once, and the thing has been repainted and the serial numbers changed. The machine comes in for work with 6000-10,000 hours on it, and goes back out with 500 hours or less and it's nice and pretty. But it's still beat to hell, and it could very well be stolen.

Satanic_Hamster:Never makes sense to steal something like that and keep it locally. Steal and ship overseas, sure. But keeping it in town/state/country? Even if you have a good diesel mechanic, EVENTUALLY you're going to need a major part or outside service and they will check the serial number.

The parts house might check the serial number, but that doesn't mean it's going to come as stolen on their computer....

Deathfrogg:Back in the late 80's I worked for a hydraulics company that built attachments for these. The buckets and thumbs and cylinders and such. Most of the used machines we worked on were "grey market" machines, purchased used (or often stolen) from across the border and brought into the country to have the work done. It was a standing joke that these machines often had no title and no traceable ownership. We'd repaint them and put on new cabs and cab risers and such, and these machines would then be shipped back across the border with new serial plates and foreign model numbers and resold overseas or just disappear into the forest to be beat on until they wore out and then abandoned. My boss made a lot of money on these machines.

Never, ever buy a used excavator, especially one with foreign model numbers. I would say there is about a 95% chance that the hours meters have been replaced at least once, and the thing has been repainted and the serial numbers changed. The machine comes in for work with 6000-10,000 hours on it, and goes back out with 500 hours or less and it's nice and pretty. But it's still beat to hell, and it could very well be stolen.

TheOther:chevydeuce: Unless he bought it used, that machine cost a hell of a lot more than $125,000....with that said, good on him for taking care of his business....

So I believed, but a quick search found a used one for $60K? Are they POS?

A $60k unit a POS? quite possible, but generally Hitachi's are actually quite good...very reliable, very quiet and some of the strongest in their respective classes...and, depending on the class or size of the machine, a $60k unit is going to be VERY used (10,000+ hours) or going to need extensive work to get it to usable condition (undercarriage, bucket and stick pins/bushings, hydraulic repairs, etc)...We just bought 3 John Deere units (new) that were $330k each and they were low bid of five dealers, one of which was an Hitachi dealer

Actually, reality is pretty much the opposite of your statement. They're large, heavy, and slow. If someone was driving it down the road, you could just follow the torn up asphalt. Since they didn't have a trail of destruction to follow, it was probably hauled away on a low-boy. Talk to the local trucking companies to find out where their low-boys were on the day in question. How many could possibly be rolling in the dead of winter in Canadia?

Actually, reality is pretty much the opposite of your statement. They're large, heavy, and slow. If someone was driving it down the road, you could just follow the torn up asphalt. Since they didn't have a trail of destruction to follow, it was probably hauled away on a low-boy. Talk to the local trucking companies to find out where their low-boys were on the day in question. How many could possibly be rolling in the dead of winter in Canadia?

At least 3 or 4.Man, give the RCMP a break, it was cold out and there were drug abusers to deal with.

Actually, reality is pretty much the opposite of your statement. They're large, heavy, and slow. If someone was driving it down the road, you could just follow the torn up asphalt. Since they didn't have a trail of destruction to follow, it was probably hauled away on a low-boy. Talk to the local trucking companies to find out where their low-boys were on the day in question. How many could possibly be rolling in the dead of winter in Canadia?

Put it on a lowboy and it can go 2000 miles in four days. Swipe a machine in Saskatchewan and you can drive it across the border in Washington or New York without the border patrol giving it a second glance. Drive it to Texas and put it on a ship to Brazil or Columbia and nobody ever sees it again.

Back in 2003 I was flying my hot air balloon in the local area. I had a mostly-novice ground crew chasing me, I was flying into an area where there were few roads and poor air-to-ground visibility due to dense foliage, and the ground crew rapidly lost me. We had extremely poor line-of-sight reception hand-held radios. At the time some of us (not me or my passenger, though) had cell phones, but the coverage was poor and I didn't know my novice ground crew's number anyway (yeah, very poor planning, I haven't made that mistake since). So after we landed I prevailed upon the very obliging landowner to use his phone to track down the ground crew. Somehow I finally reached one of the novices. I told her where we were and she said she'd get to me "as soon as we get back on the ground". When she had lost me she had gone to the nearby tiny airport and convinced one of the local pilots to take her up in his Cessna to do an aerial search for my balloon. She didn't find me that way, but being in the air like that improved her phone reception to the point where I could reach her.

Clearly I was impressed by her resourcefulness and persistence. Enough so that, a little over a year later, we got married.

Deathfrogg:jtown: When these things are taken, they can go almost anywhere.

Actually, reality is pretty much the opposite of your statement. They're large, heavy, and slow. If someone was driving it down the road, you could just follow the torn up asphalt. Since they didn't have a trail of destruction to follow, it was probably hauled away on a low-boy. Talk to the local trucking companies to find out where their low-boys were on the day in question. How many could possibly be rolling in the dead of winter in Canadia?

Put it on a lowboy and it can go 2000 miles in four days. Swipe a machine in Saskatchewan and you can drive it across the border in Washington or New York without the border patrol giving it a second glance. Drive it to Texas and put it on a ship to Brazil or Columbia and nobody ever sees it again.

I don't know how much cargo you've tried to cross the border with, but your scenario is absolutely NOTHING like what happens when trying to bring things across the US/Mexico border....

Deathfrogg:jtown: When these things are taken, they can go almost anywhere.

Actually, reality is pretty much the opposite of your statement. They're large, heavy, and slow. If someone was driving it down the road, you could just follow the torn up asphalt. Since they didn't have a trail of destruction to follow, it was probably hauled away on a low-boy. Talk to the local trucking companies to find out where their low-boys were on the day in question. How many could possibly be rolling in the dead of winter in Canadia?

Put it on a lowboy and it can go 2000 miles in four days. Swipe a machine in Saskatchewan and you can drive it across the border in Washington or New York without the border patrol giving it a second glance. Drive it to Texas and put it on a ship to Brazil or Columbia and nobody ever sees it again.

And where ya gonna get that lowboy and truck to pull it? That's not the kind of thing cousin Zeke has out in the barn. The RCMP could at least try to investigate instead of sitting on their thumbs. And border crossings aren't as easy as you seem to think they are.

If the cops spent half as much time recovering stolen property and returning it to it's owners as they did running around trying to bust victimless crimes the would be a whole hell of a lot more popular.

chevydeuce:The parts house might check the serial number, but that doesn't mean it's going to come as stolen on their computer....

If you had a major piece of equipment stolen, you wouldn't report it to the dealer? For parts for machines like that, you can't just order them from Wal-Mart (well, some filters you can get from NAPA). You're going to have to order them from a dealer and eventually you might have to give up a serial number. Heck, some dealerships require that you give them the serial number to buy *anything* from them.

Satanic_Hamster:chevydeuce: The parts house might check the serial number, but that doesn't mean it's going to come as stolen on their computer....

If you had a major piece of equipment stolen, you wouldn't report it to the dealer? For parts for machines like that, you can't just order them from Wal-Mart (well, some filters you can get from NAPA). You're going to have to order them from a dealer and eventually you might have to give up a serial number. Heck, some dealerships require that you give them the serial number to buy *anything* from them.

I work in mining/tunneling/heavy construction. This has come up.

I work in construction too....and yeah, sure you could report it to your local dealer, but even still I don't think their computer systems are set up so that a particular serial number is going to be "flagged"...maybe if it stolen and kept local, it might do some good, but I don't think it's a given that it would work...and as somebody else upthread said, they can be transported pretty far in just a short (relatively) time...buy parts from another dealer, or off the internet, serial number is used strictly to determine parts requirement...

Pair-o-Dice:Same thing happened to me. Kinda. I had five guitars stolen from me and the copswere less than enthusiastic about finding them. So I went to every pawn shop I couldthink of, showing them pictures of the guitars that I have on my phone. Sure enough, laterthat afternoon I got a phone call from one of the pawn shop owners. Turns out I knew thePOS that had robbed me.

chevydeuce:I work in construction too....and yeah, sure you could report it to your local dealer, but even still I don't think their computer systems are set up so that a particular serial number is going to be "flagged"...maybe if it stolen and kept local, it might do some good, but I don't think it's a given that it would work...and as somebody else upthread said, they can be transported pretty far in just a short (relatively) time...buy parts from another dealer, or off the internet, serial number is used strictly to determine parts requirement...

I know for a fact that CAT and Volvo will flag stolen equipment in their databases and if it comes up on a service call or parts order they'll put a hold on it.

Had a rental CAT D8 once that we had to have a CAT mechanic come out to look at. When he entered the serial number into his laptop to fill out the work ticket it came up hot (in this case, there apparently was a mistake in their database).

Yeah, the cops are super lazy. They didn't rent a plane and fly a search pattern over the whole of Canada to find this guys excavator. These things are never dumped in the woods and reported stolen to get the insurance money. Just lazy stupid cops who were arresting pot smokers instead. The population is 104k, so they definitely have the resources to investigate this kinda shiat. And being near an international border, they'd have the ability to fly into a different jurisdiction to look for it too.

Satanic_Hamster:chevydeuce: I work in construction too....and yeah, sure you could report it to your local dealer, but even still I don't think their computer systems are set up so that a particular serial number is going to be "flagged"...maybe if it stolen and kept local, it might do some good, but I don't think it's a given that it would work...and as somebody else upthread said, they can be transported pretty far in just a short (relatively) time...buy parts from another dealer, or off the internet, serial number is used strictly to determine parts requirement...

I know for a fact that CAT and Volvo will flag stolen equipment in their databases and if it comes up on a service call or parts order they'll put a hold on it.

Had a rental CAT D8 once that we had to have a CAT mechanic come out to look at. When he entered the serial number into his laptop to fill out the work ticket it came up hot (in this case, there apparently was a mistake in their database).

Satanic_Hamster:chevydeuce: The parts house might check the serial number, but that doesn't mean it's going to come as stolen on their computer....

If you had a major piece of equipment stolen, you wouldn't report it to the dealer? For parts for machines like that, you can't just order them from Wal-Mart (well, some filters you can get from NAPA). You're going to have to order them from a dealer and eventually you might have to give up a serial number. Heck, some dealerships require that you give them the serial number to buy *anything* from them.

I work in mining/tunneling/heavy construction. This has come up.

I'd imagine the next step will be mating the parts. So for the replacement part to work, the dealer or manufacturer has to flash the part with a key based on the serial number. As in you call them up, give them the serial number, and they flash it. Without that flash it won't work on the vehicle since it won't be able to connect to the on board network. Of course I bet a lot of the machinery is still mostly mechanical and doesn't have an on board network yet.

On future designs it would be trivial to have the vehicle display its serial number (to prevent physical alteration of it) and for CAT to have a website where you punch the serial number and it tells you if it is stolen or not.

/it's how we're making chop shop operations less attractive for cars, you need the VIN and an additional code for the part to work//cuts down on autotheft which is good for the consumer, but increases repair costs

ha-ha-guy:/I always assumed contractors would just install a locator on devices that expensive and use that that

Exactly. WTF?

The guy has $125K machines that are continually left in unguarded work sites and doesn't use GPS locators? If I owned his company, every machine would have two or three hidden GPS trackers. Professional trackers can cost a few hundred along with fees, but DIY version can be put together for tens of dollars.